WATCH: ‘Alt-Right’ Disrupts Seemingly Clueless Shia LaBeouf’s Live Broadcast
Image by YouTube
By Sam Kestenbaum January 25, 2017
During a live-streamed protest performance organized by actor Shia LaBeouf members of the “alt-right” bombarded the camera, praising Donald Trump and delivering coded messages to fellow members of their white nationalist movement.
LaBeouf, who was born to a Jewish mother and a Christian father, calls his participatory performance piece, “He will not divide us,” a mantra which he and others chant repeatedly on screen and in reference to Trump’s polarizing rhetoric. The performance is housed at a museum in Queens, New York.
But, over the course of three days, 4chan users took advantage of the platform to spread their own, somewhat cryptic, political messages — using coded “alt-right” references and insider language which would be meaningless to an outsider.
4chan is one of a handful of online platforms where the somewhat amorphous “alt-right” movement developed.
For example, a young duo walked up to the camera and held a piece of paper, on which it was written: “#Pepe”
Pepe the Frog is a cartoon icon of the “alt-right” and the Anti-Defamation League has added his likeness to its database of hate symbols.
Another man, his face concealed, spelled out the word “KEK” in red tape on a wall nearby the camera.
“Kek” is another frog figure associated with the “alt-right,” seen as something of an ancient Egyptian relation to Pepe who has divine powers.
Other young men played music on stereos, choosing a 1986 disco song, “Shadilay,” sung by the Italian band named P.E.P.E. Remarkably, the original single design for “Shadilay” features an illustration of a green frog holding a magic wand. This coincidence has made the song into an unofficial theme song for Pepe.
LaBeouf and others congregated at the site sometimes seem unaware of the “alt-right” messages, as they are so obscure.
But one man also approached the camera and recited the opening words of a white supremacist slogan known as “Fourteen words.” In this case, LaBeouf interceded and shouted the man off camera. But not before the disrupter was able to slip in another frog-reference to the camera, shouting “Praise Kek!”
Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected]
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
